LAKEWOOD, Colo. — A team of 80 Colorado firefighters, engineers, and medical experts are on standby to be deployed to the East Coast to assist in recovery efforts following Hurricane Sandy.

The team, known as FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Colorado Task Force One, is packed up and prepared to be deployed with just a few hours notice.

“We’re like the elite heavy system for the national system,” said Cpt. Rod Tyus, a commander of the task force.

The group, which has been used in national emergencies including 9/11, is part of a nationwide system that encompasses firefighters specially trained in rescue missions. FEMA maintains 28 similar teams nationwide that are often deployed in natural disasters that require complicated cleanup and rescues.

“We have to make sure we can feed everybody, make sure their equipment’s working,” said April Walker-Stemple, a logistics coordinator for FEMA on Tuesday.

(CNN) — Pelting rains, whipping winds, mass evacuations: There is no doubt that Hurricane Sandy, by Sunday, had already made a mammoth impact on the U.S. East Coast.

And it should only get worse.

That’s the consensus view, among forecasters and officials, as the Category 1 storm continued to chug northeastward parallel to the shore. Even with its eye still hundreds of miles away, those on the North Carolina and Virginia coasts felt its wrath Sunday.

But if, as expected, it turns toward the United States later in the day, Sandy will have an even more direct — and potentially calamitous — effect on millions of Americans. Forecasters warn it will likely collide with a cold front from the West to spawn a “superstorm” that could slog along the Eastern Seaboard for days — meaning even more flooding, even more power outages, even more potential danger.

London (CNN) — An Olympic bronze medal stolen from a London nightclub earlier this week has been reunited with its owner.

A spokesman for the London Metropolitan police said a medal belonging to the British field hockey player Hannah Macleod had been mailed anonymously to the offices of England Hockey on Friday. The player had appealed via her Twitter account for the medal to be returned in this manner.

A bronze medal belonging to fellow British Olympian Alex Partridge, a rower, remains missing.

“We are still looking to recover the second medal, and we stress that our inquiries remain active,” said Detective Chief Inspector James Harman.

“Alex’s medal has yet to be traced, and he is understandably keen to be reunited with it as soon as possible.”